NOTE: Summer 2005 was a very contentious time for County Clay. Commissioner Jimmy Sams was up for reelection and campaign plans included posting a Ten Commandments display in the Commission room. And boy oh boy did his antics bring out the masses including many in disagreement on combining politics with religion. One of those was a Jewish feller who didn't want one kind of Commandments display over his.
  Prosecutor Davis told the CCC during a public meeting, the display had to go. After he caught H from everybody he ran into, a few days later, Davis changed his official legal opinion and told the three blind mice, call it a Historical display and everything would be alright.
  Dimly lits threw rusty nails in the Communicator parking lot followed by life threatening tele calls. The Ace Cub Reporter was seen as the most evil person on Earth.
 

from Thursday's Charleston Daily Mail

Clay panel votes to keep plaque

By The Associated Press

Thursday July 14, 2005

    The Clay County Commission voted unanimously before an audience of nearly 200 to leave a plaque of the Ten Commandments on

the wall of its chamber. The plaque is one of several historical documents -- which include the Bill of Rights -- that are on display, said

Commissioner Jimmy Sams. The display has been up for several years. The Commandments went up first and were followed a couple

of weeks later by the other documents.

    "I knew the ACLU would say something, and we just didn't want that to happen," Sams said Wednesday. "But it happened anyway."

    County resident Jesse Sizemore has asked the commission several times to remove the Ten Commandments, citing the constitutional

requirement of separation of church and state.  Sizemore couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday, but another resident opposed to

the display, Andy Waddell, said he thinks it's "scary" that the Constitution and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court "are second class in

Clay County."

    "The issue is, will Clay County, West Virginia, adhere to the Supreme Court and the law of the land? That's the issue," he said. Last

October, the American Civil Liberties Union, which Waddell is a member of, sent a letter to the commission stating that if the plaque

was not removed, there could be legal action.

   The ACLU's West Virginia executive director, Andrew Schneider, said Wednesday that the group was still considering a lawsuit but

has not filed one.   "It's not as if we haven't decided that the Ten Commandments plaque in the county commission room of Clay

County is violating the law. . . . We are only considering how to deal with that violation," Schneider said.   "We view litigation as a last

resort."   The Supreme Court issued split rulings last month on the legality of displaying the Ten Commandments at public buildings --

striking down framed copies in two Kentucky courthouses but upholding a 6-foot granite monument on a 22-acre lot surrounding the

Texas Capitol.

   The justices said Ten Commandments exhibits would be upheld if their main purpose was to honor the nation's legal, rather than

religious, traditions, and if they didn't promote one religious sect over another.   Sams says the Clay County display falls into the legal

category. "I don't think it's religion, it's law," he said.

   But Schneider contends that the commission would "face a heavy burden of proving that the displays do not convey, and were not

intended to convey, the religious message that the Ten Commandments clearly represent."

    "There are many different versions of the Ten Commandments," Schneider said. "The Catholic version differs from the Jewish

version, which differs from the many Protestant versions -- so how does one decide which version is best?  "The Ten Commandments

advocate religious beliefs that should be left to each individual. . . . People should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own

community because they might not share the dominant religious view.

   "Religious freedom is alive and well in America precisely because government cannot tell us what to believe and cannot favor one

religion over another," Schneider said.

   So many people attended Wednesday's commission meeting that the meeting was moved from the Clay County Courthouse to Clay

County High School.  All but about five of those in attendance were in favor of leaving the display up, Sams said.